Sherri Bryan Books in Order

If you want a quick first taste: Tapas, Carrot Cake and a Corpse → Fudge Cake, Felony and a Funeral
If you prefer village mysteries with pets: Bodies, Baddies and a Crabby Tabby → Secrets, Lies and Puppy Dog Eyes → Malice, Remorse, and a Rocking Horse
If you like coastal café cozies: Tapas, Carrot Cake and a Corpse → Spare Ribs, Secrets and a Scandal → Pumpkins, Peril and a Paella
If you want a warm community arc: Bodies, Baddies and a Crabby Tabby → Dormice, Schemers, and Misdemeanours → Last Words and Ladybirds → Nightingales, Betrayals and Wedding Veils

Sherri Bryan grew up in the UK, with Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton close at hand, and the habit of disappearing into books started early. She now lives in southern Spain with her husband and rescue dog, and that mix of British roots and Spanish life runs through much of what she writes.

Long before she published fiction, she was storing up material. She owned a marina-front café in a Spanish coastal town for six years, used to work as an event coordinator, and has said there is a fair bit of her in both Charlotte Denver and Megan Fallon. Food, village life, busy local events, and the small dramas of everyday people all found their way onto the page.

She started writing young, and wrote her first story at fourteen.

The bigger turning point came much later. In 2015, after downloading a cozy mystery almost by accident, she realized she had found the kind of book she not only loved to read but also wanted to write. That same year, her first cozy, Tapas, Carrot Cake and a Corpse, introduced Charlotte Denver and the fictional seaside town of St. Eves.

From there, Bryan built two very readable mystery worlds. The Charlotte Denver books follow a café owner in a close-knit coastal town where gossip moves fast, tea is never far away, and murder has a habit of ruining the day. In the Bliss Bay books, which begin with Bodies, Baddies and a Crabby Tabby, Megan Fallon heads back to her childhood village expecting a reset and gets pulled into one mystery after another instead.

Her fictional places are invented, but they draw heavily on happy holidays in Cornwall and Devon, with a few Spanish touches added along the way.

If you sample a few titles, you get a clear sense of what she enjoys doing. Fudge Cake, Felony and a Funeral leans into family tension and inheritance trouble. Secrets, Lies and Puppy Dog Eyes mixes village gossip with old secrets and a new start. Crab Cakes, Killers and a Kaftan turns a dead crime writer and her unfinished memoir into a neat setup for buried history coming back to bite.

What readers often come for is the balance. Bryan likes twisty plots, but she keeps the violence off page and the tone warm. There is usually food somewhere nearby, a dog or cat stealing scenes, a bit of romance, and a community full of people who know more than they first admit. She has also said foreshadowing matters to her, so the clues are there if you want to play detective.

That makes her books a good fit for readers who want cozy mysteries with real stakes but not a grim atmosphere. Her stories return again and again to friendship, loyalty, family ties, second chances, and the way secrets can sit quietly in small places for years.

When she isn't writing, Bryan has said she's usually reading, cooking, watching crime dramas, or going out to eat. And if she had not become a writer, she has joked that she would probably have ended up cooking in a small restaurant of her own.